There is an old French
adage that says the best soups are made in the oldest pans...Re-launched
three weeks prior the Sydney-Hobart yacht race 2012, Wild Oats XI has again become the undisputed winner!

It is interesting to see what kind of
change its designers Reichel/Pugh have made particularly on its appendages. In 2011 Investec Loyal (ex-Maximus & then now Ragamuffin
Loyal) – a 2005 Greg Elliott’s design –defeated it by 2 minutes and 48 seconds but Wild Oats XI wins again this
year, on elapsed and corrected time!

Rolex/Carlo Borlenghi 2012 - Wild Oats XI

Note that the second, Ragamuffin Loyal ex-Investec
Loyal, dates from 2005 and the third one Lahan (ex-Konica Minolta
& Zana) is a 99-foot designed in
2003 by the New-Zealander Brett Bakewell-White – recently optimized for the
IRC, a light displacement, fixed keel and reduced draft (4,33 m).

Note that this year the second, Ragamuffin Loyal ex-Investec
Loyal, dates from 2005 and the third one Lahan (ex-Konica Minolta
& Zana) is a 99-foot designed in
2003 by the New-Zealander Brett Bakewell-White – recently optimized for the
IRC, a light displacement with a fixed keel and reduced draft (4,33 m).

Redrawn from many photos, the lines plan
shows a hull with slightly rounded bilges, with flaring sides, a narrow
waterline (4,10 m) and a depth hull positioned forward the keel. When heeling
the waterline uses all the boat length; the wetted surface is reduced but the
flaring sides do not have the anti-drift fins role as it happens with more
recent hull shapes with hard-chine as Farr’s ICAP Leopard or Juan K’s Rambler
100.

Added in 2012 the forward daggerboard with
its thick profile aims to correct the instability when luffing-up or
bearing-off on the crest of the waves when downwind sailing. Indeed, with these
long light displacements stretched with imposing bowsprits, the downwind sails
shift the center of the sail plan far forward. This tends the boat to be slack.

The improvements to the structure and all
the boat have allowed saving weight that has been put in the keel.

The vertical winglets behind the bulb
replace the classic winglets in an innovative way. The small flat part on the
back generates two eddies that are scattered by theses winglets. More! These two
wings generate a stabilizing anti-drift fins when the keel is canted to windward.

Between 2007 and 2008, Wild Oats XI was fitted with its two daggerboards forward the mast,
sloped by some ten degrees, that corrects the tendency to slide on its
upper-works when heeling.

In 2005 Wild
Oats XI was a development of Wild
Oats IX, a 60-foot launched in 2002 and record holder of the 2003
Sydney-Hobart race, fitted with the same appendages – canting keel and two
rudders one as a canard.

Back to the future...

Pilgrim had been designed by Steward & Binney – successors of Edward
Burgess three times winner of the America’s Cup in 1885, 1886, 1887 – was a
pure steel bulb keel boat fitted with a forward daggerboard.

Jubilee, drawn by John Paine, was a bulb keel yacht fitted with a complementary
daggerboard under the ballast of the keel, an innovation taken up on the first
Wally, Wallygator, and a forward
daggerboard.